Bob Shyrock: My trip to Dallas included a meaningful stop

View full sizeIn this Nov. 22, 1963 file photo, President John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy ride in the backseat of an open limousine on Main Street at Ervay Street in Dallas as the presidential motorcade approaches Dealey Plaza. Texas Gov. John Connally, and his wife Nellie are seated in the limousine's jump seats. Five decades after President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot and long after official inquiries ended, thousands of pages of investigative documents remain withheld from public view. Associated Press file photo

Fifty years. Fifty.

Has it really been that long?

Nov. 22, 1963.

On a sunlit Friday afternoon, six days before Thanksgiving, I drove 2-year-old son Rob for a burger and fries to the new McDonald’s restaurant on the Vestal Parkway just outside Binghamton, N.Y., where I was working as a sportswriter for The Evening Press. My wife, meanwhile, had an important doctors’ visit about a mile away.

As Rob and I were leaving McDonald’s, several patrons inexplicably began sobbing. And a number of cars had pulled over on the Parkway. The world seemed to be operating on slow motion.

“The President’s been shot in Dallas,” one cried, her lips quivering.

It was stunningly surreal news.

“Is he ... ?”

“I don’t know.” Bewildered, I drove to the doctors.

“Did you hear?” my wife asked.

The day John F. Kennedy was shot and killed was the same day we learned our second son would be born in seven months.

The weekend was a blur. In our Binghamton apartment, we watched Walter Cronkite on our black and white TV as JFK was pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested as the suspected assassin, and Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald right before our eyes. Meanwhile, the NFL played a full slate of Sunday games in spite of the horrific events in Texas.

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The drive last week, from Gloucester County to Dallas, seemed endless. Just under 1,500 miles in a rented Penske truck. Three of us helped Dan Cargill move to his family’s third job location (Brown, Northwestern) as a calculus teacher at Southern Methodist University (SMU) on the outskirts of the Big D. We had lunch in Nashville, a stop low-lighted by Mike’s retrieval of his $20 fee from a con artist not employed by the parking authority.

I’d been to Dallas briefly about 35 years ago but had always wanted to take a museum tour at the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, where JFK’s assassination and his legacy are chronicled for the ages.

Dealey Plaza is located in Dallas’ west district, where a memorial is in the works to commemorate the half-century anniversary of JFK’s death.

The grassy knoll is still intact, attracting tourists of all nationalities, but other 1963 staples are gone, like the Stemmons Freeway sign and Hertz car rental sign that rested atop the book depository.

You could argue that the museum tour is a step back in time. It’s much more than that.

Even late on a muggy Sunday afternoon, tourists’ conversations are muted by the sixth floor exhibits which take the viewer step-by-step from the pre-Dallas days to the assassination and subsequent events. And there, in a roped-off corner, surrounded by boxed depository books, is the spot from which Oswald is alleged to have shot Kennedy with an Italian Carcano bolt-action rifle.

The tour is as long as you wish it to be, one, four, six hours, and for the reasonable sum of $16, or $14 for an oldtimer like me. It has to be the best museum bargain, for which there is any charge, in America. And you’ll never forget it.

I could insist I drove 1,500 miles to see it. That would be a lie. But I’d do it again.

Except for the sounds of Walter Cronkite’s voice, and the voice overs on dozens of museum highlight stops, the only sounds are the sad sobs of tourists trying to make sense of the assassination of one of our most beloved presidents, and the uniquely sobering atmosphere.